JOHNNY HOLEVA

Driven, thoughtful creative manager with over 19 years of experience in branding, thought leadership, and marketing problem solving. Achieving inspired excellence is the objective by maximizing tools and resources from original concept through deliverable execution. Operates with an optimistic, disciplined approach and thrives in a fast-paced setting. Servant leader. Seeks to ask the important questions, to better understand the broader strategic picture and meet business objectives. Cringes any time a foot mark is improperly used as an apostrophe. Core competencies include:

Karl Strauss Brewing Company 2007 – PresentThe 41st largest craft brewery in the U.S. and Southern California’s original craft brewery with regional distribution to more than 4,000 retail accounts. Company has over 1000 employees, a statewide distributor network, ten full-service restaurants, and multiple license agreements. Named the “2016 Mid-Size Brewery of the Year” by the Great American Beer Festival.Creative Services ManagerReporting to the Vice President of Marketing, provides creative leadership and brand expertise. Responsible for the overall development and direction of the visual identity. Performs a wide range of functions from leading creative (art, copy, voice) to managing production responsibilities. Provides direction for ideation, evaluation of ideas, and executions based on the objectives and strategies provided in the brief. Presents to internal audiences clearly and concisely to sell-in ideas and creative solutions. Ensures effective, unique, and consistent brand communication.

• Member of strategic brand study and revitalization team responsible for analyzing, repositioning, and creative ideating a 20-year-old craft beer brand, achieving 15% improvement in sales over two years.

Karl Strauss Brewing Company 2001 – 2003Senior Graphic ArtistOversaw the creation of the Graphic Design Department within the Marketing Department, servicing the Beer and Restaurant Divisions. Responsible for work distribution, design timelines, resource management, and hiring of interns, part-time staffing, and full-time designers. Designed bi-annual company newsletter, brochure, and packaging.

Karl Strauss Brewing Company 1998 – 2000Graphic Artist – Restaurant DivisionDesigned and produced logos, menus, advertising, and a wide variety of POS for three brewery restaurants. Responsible for all print buying and vendor management. Developed, coded, and executed re-launch of corporate web site.

The Continuing Committee 2007 – PresentNon-profit, fan-run gaming community which creates cards, interprets rules, and organizes tournaments for the Star Trek Customizable Card Game – a collectible game based on the Star Trek universe. Introduced in 1994 by Decipher, Inc., the game was transferred to the fans in 2007. The online community (trekcc.org) and new virtual cards keep the game environment constantly evolving.Art DirectorReporting to the Chairman, provides creative design leadership, identifies work process improvements, and manages a 6-person Art Department team. Responsible for designing virtual cards, brand touchpoints, and support materials for worldwide organized play.

Course Description:This logo design course is all about craftsmanship of the artwork, the minutia of building logo marks. It’s focused on what goes into the execution of a good logo—because it won’t matter what the idea is if you design it poorly. Von Glitschka explains how drawing complements the brainstorming and design process, introduces time-tested build methods for vector-based graphics, and explains how to make the critical decisions around format, color, and other aspects of brand identity. These creative tactics and workflows will help you create better, stronger workflows that display beautifully in all formats: in print, on the web, or in motion.

Best Tricks/Tips/Lessons I Learned:I love the design and illustrating skill of Von Glitschka. He is a Design Hero of mine. Not only is he a creative designer/illustrator, but he displays a real passion for precision craftsmanship. Von makes Adobe Illustrator sing, and it's enlightening to watch him work. One of the of the things that really struck me watching this 5-hour course was the confidence that Von has in his abilities, without ever being cocky. It's a real strength for Von, and any designer.

Course Description:To move forward as a designer, sometimes you have to take a step back. This installment of Foundations of Graphic Design History explores one of the most influential modern design movements of all time: Bauhaus. Its revolutionary concepts—centered on simplicity, quality, truth in materials, and form that follows function—influence almost every design today. Join Sean Adams for a deep dive into the Bauhaus movement as manifested across many connected creative fields (from architecture and advertising to furniture and product design). Learn how Bauhaus was born, and the effect it has on today's work as well as our approach to design education. Whether you love history or just want some inspiration from the past to lead you to fresh ideas, this course will help you explore new ways of working, thinking, and creating, all through the lens of design history.

Best Tricks/Tips/Lessons I Learned:I remember learning about the Bauhaus movement years ago at TCU and feeling like it was all just old design. Many years of design experience have helped me understand the significance of the Bauhaus movement and how so many visuals/brands today (Apple, Nike, Pantone) have cycled back to the Bauhaus style.

Course Description:Award-winning food and advertising photographer Bill Robbins has been sharing the art and science behind shooting food and drink photographs for years. Join him as he shows how to enhance a food’s color, shape, and texture and how to convey a sense of mood, environment, and story. The course also addresses essential gear, effective prop placement, and lighting techniques, and includes tips for styling various dishes, staging and photographing drinks, shooting on location at a restaurant, and editing the final photos.

Course Description:Graphic designer Marian Bantjes has collaborated with numerous design legends, including Debbie Millman from Sterling Brands, Michael Bierut and Paula Scher from Pentagram/NY, Sean Adams from AdamsMorioka, and Stefan Sagmeister—all of whom are featured in this film. This Creative Inspirations was shot on location in Toronto, Vancouver, New York, Los Angeles, and Marian's home and workspace near Vancouver, where Marian shares her views on design and designers.

Best Tricks/Tips/Lessons I Learned:“You can always tell when it's something that has someone's heart in it, when they discovered something new while they were doing it.”

Course Description:Margo Chase is one of the most influential graphic designers of our time. Over the past 20 years, Margo's highly expressive work has been seen in movie posters for Bram Stoker's Dracula; on album covers for top performers like Cher, Madonna, and Prince; and in ads for brands such as Starbucks, Target, and Procter & Gamble. With a background in biology, Margo migrated to the world of graphic design, where she brought a unique, organic quality to logos, lettering, and identity design. This installment of Creative Inspirations takes viewers inside the studio, portfolio, and adrenaline-pumped lifestyle of this inspired and inspiring designer.

Best Tricks/Tips/Lessons I Learned:“The reason we do this is really to help clients solve a business problem.”“A big part of creating a style guide is trying to define what the brand actually stands for in the first place.”

Course Description:Timothy Sexton, senior retoucher at New York's Gloss Studio, builds the foundation for mastering the art of fashion retouching. The course begins with a discussion of how to evaluate an image and develop a retouching strategy that dovetails with the client's needs and the photographer's vision. Timothy also details an approach to file and layer management that simplifies creating multiple versions of a photo for client approval.

Next, Timothy delves into several core aspects of retouching—skin, hair, clothing, and body shaping—providing real-world insights and Adobe Photoshop techniques. The course describes ways to enhance eyes and lips, selectively sharpen portions of a photo to draw attention to them, use masks to change the color of clothing, and more. The course concludes with details on how to evaluate your work.

Best Tricks/Tips/Lessons I Learned:It was really cool seeing a pro work to find the best contrast in a photo. A tiny detail that adds a great deal of pop to a portrait photo is spending time on the highlights in the eyes. Cloning one side to the other can make all the difference.

Course Description:These 18 simple design techniques will immediately improve your layouts, brought to you by John McWade, founder and creative director of Before & After magazine. These tutorials combine instruction on topics like designs without graphics, extreme cropping, big and small type, logo design, and more, with John's distinct visual learning style.

Best Tricks/Tips/Lessons I Learned:I really enjoyed two of the lessons: Extreme photo cropping and logo creation. The photo cropping was described as having a window to a larger world. I liked that simple view point to using cropping for design. Also, the instructor had some very creative tips toward interesting logo design. He showed how simple solutions can be the strongest creative solutions.

Course Description:This course is about learning how to use color, not only to create more effective designs, but also to tell a story. Illustrator, professor, and author Mary Jane Begin explains how color intertwines with brand identity, how it affects the mood of a piece and directs the viewer's attention to areas of interest, and how it can connect images or create space between elements. She removes the mystery surrounding the color wheel and color relationships; shows how to layer, mix, and digitally alter color; and use light to integrate temperature, translucency, and contrast.

Best Tricks/TIps/Lessons I Learned:I really enjoyed the lesson on Seeing through Color, something that I take for granted. A lot of my creative work is on opaque mediums. But not everything - I’m looking at you, Glassware. This course was a nice refresher and reminder of how light allows us to see color and it also allows us to see through color. This covered the topic of color being transparent, translucent, or opaque.

Course Description:Write a creative brief for client-commissioned projects and ensure you have a roadmap for developing great design, in this installment of Running a Design Business. Terry Lee Stone explains what creative briefs are, what goes into them, what they look like, and how to use them throughout the project. Learn how to establish the drivers, audience, competition, message, and other critical success factors. These lessons cover interviewing, researching, drawing out consumer insights, and synthesizing all of this information into a cohesive and actionable document.

Best Tricks/TIps/Lessons I Learned:I loved some of the bottom-line tips that were included in the course: Use simple sentence structure. Use present tense/Active Language. The Creative Brief is the roadmap, not the solution. Visualize it. Use bullet points. Keep it creative, keep it brief.

Course Description:James Williamson introduces the fundamental concepts, learning approaches, and tools for web design. He explains what it means to be a web designer, the various areas of specialization, and whether web design is the right hobby or career for you. He then gives you some time to play around with the three core technologies (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript).

Best Tricks/TIps/Lessons I Learned:The rise of mobile devices = “mobile first” planning. Many designers now consider mobile first when planning sites, rather than a desktop.

Course Description:Creativity is not an external force or a rare skill; it's a habit that can be learned and exercised every day. This course challenges preconceived notions about creativity and provides valuable tools that will unlock this skill to help you generate better ideas faster. Let Stefan Mumaw help you identify and break down creative obstacles, and lead you through a few short, fun exercises that build your creative muscles, while illuminating key points about your behavior, experience, and perspective that you might not have realized before.

Best Tricks/TIps/Lessons I Learned:Creativity is Problem Solving = Relevance + Novelty. Relevance is the degree by which a problem is solved fully. Novelty is the degree of uniqueness or originality in that solution.

Course Description:Join illustrative designer Von Glitschka as he deconstructs the creative process to teach you how to develop and create precise vector graphics. The course begins with an overview of his methodology for design and drawing—analog methods that are vital to digital workflows. Next, discover how to prepare yourself and your client for the project by defining the scope and expectations early on. With the creative brief ready and ideation explored, Von jumps into sketching, refining, and creating vector graphics through simple build methods. He continues to art direct the work and conducts digital and physical presentations of the final designs. The last chapter includes some workflow enhancements designed to save you time and conserve your creative energy for future projects.

Best Tricks/TIps/Lessons I Learned:Before. During. After. I loved this conceptual thinking method. You take a central topic and then brainstorm it from a before, during, and after point of view. It’s a simple way to get to some very creative solutions.